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Most of the transfers on this list are to clubs under UEFA's jurisdiction, and most of the purchasing clubs are from England, France, Italy and Spain. However, since the mid 2010s two Chinese clubs have paid large fees for three Brazilian players.

^Fee was to be paid over time with an initial €105 million, plus another €5 million in additional bonuses; Pogba's agent Mino Raiola also received a reported €27m from Juventus, from a portion of aforementioned transfer fee from Manchester United.

^Fee was to be paid over time with an initial £75 million, plus another £15 million in additional bonuses.

^fee originally in 150 billion lire; the fixed exchange rate between euro and lire was 1:1936.27. The fee was paid in 4 annual installments;[46] on accounting purpose, the fee was listed as approx. €75m[46]

^Initial transfer fee for Ibrahimović is indeterminable. According to Barcelona's press release, Ibrahimović signed a 5-year contract, for €46 million fee in installments and the exchange of Eto'o (valued at €20 million) and the loan of Alexander Hleb (with an option to buy for a €10 million fee), with a €250 million release clause, making Ibrahimović worth €66 million plus the undisclosed loan fee of Hleb. However, the Hleb deal collapsed. Eventually Ibrahimović cost Barcelona €69.884 million according to their financial report, which included other fees. As per the Inter book the fee was €69.5 million, but part of the Inter fee (max. 5% according to FIFA regulation) were deducted and distributed by Barcelona to youth clubs of Ibrahimović: Malmö FF and AFC Ajax as solidarity contribution.

^The fee broke the world record in pound sterling, but not in euro; as the fee was paid in installments, the accountant that prepared the financial report adjusted the value to €66.073 million as the present value to reflect the loss in interest

^Fee was to be paid over time with an initial £58 million, plus another £12 million in additional bonuses.

^Fee was to be paid over time with an initial £44 million, plus another £5 million in additional bonuses.

^Lazio broke the then-world transfer record by paying £35 million (£16 million upfront and transferred Matías Almeyda and Sérgio Conceição) to acquire Crespo. The total transfer fee later amounted to £40 million.

^Fee was to be paid over time with an initial £50 million (€57M), plus another £3 million in additional bonuses.

^Fee was to be paid over time with an initial €53 million (£46.5M), plus another €7 million (£6.1M) in additional bonuses.

^Part of the fees was paid via the transfer of Jonathan Bachini to Parma for a total of 100 billion lire; the fixed exchange rate of lira to euro was 1936.27 lire to 1 euro.

^Manchester United paid £36 million up front for Martial, but his contract contains three bonus clauses worth £7.2 million each, taking the potential fee to £57.6 million. The clauses each relate to certain accomplishments being achieved in the next four years, including if Martial scores 25 goals during that span, amasses 25 caps for France or wins the Ballon d'Or before June 2019.

^An indeterminate size of the fee was paid via the transfer of Diego Simeone to Lazio that totaled €49 million.

It was not until 1928 that the first five-figure transfer took place. David Jack of Bolton Wanderers was the subject of interest from Arsenal, and in order to negotiate the fee down, Arsenal manager Herbert Chapman got the Bolton representatives drunk.[135][136] Subsequently, David Jack was transferred for a world record fee when Arsenal paid £10,890 to Bolton for his services, after Bolton had asked for £13,000, which was double the previous record made when Sunderland signed Burnley's Bob Kelly a fee of for £6,500.[134]

The second player to twice be transferred for world record fees is Diego Maradona.[134][136] His transfers from Boca Juniors to Barcelona for £3m, and then to Napoli for £5m, both broke the record in 1982 and 1984 respectively. The third became Ronaldo with his record-breaking move from PSV Eindhoven to Barcelona in 1996 for £13.2m, although Alan Shearer's transfer to Newcastle broke the record the same summer. A year later Inter Milan paid £19.5m for Ronaldo and again he became the player with the highest transfer fee.

Zidane's record stood for 8 years, the longest since the 1940s. Real Madrid continued with the Galácticos policy by buying Kaká from Milan for €67 million (£56 million),[145] which was the world record in pound sterling. However, both world record in euro and in pound sterling were broke by Real themselves when signing Cristiano Ronaldo for £80m (€94m) from Manchester United in the same transfer window,[134][146] 4 years later Real Madrid broke the record again after completed the signing of Gareth Bale from Tottenham Hotspur in 2013. Although Real initially insisted that the transfer cost €91.59 million, slightly less than the Ronaldo fee, the deal was widely reported to be around €100 million (around £85.1 million).[147][148] Documents leaked in 2016 by Football Leaks revealed that installments brought the final Bale fee up to a total of €100,759,418.[134][149] In 2016, Manchester United eventually took the record away from Real Madrid, signing French midfielder Paul Pogba for €105 million (£89 million), [150] four years after having released him to Juventus for training compensation.

A year after the Pogba transfer, however, there was a major jump in the record fee. Paris St. Germain matched the €222 million buyout fee of Barcelona'sNeymar, converted to a reported £198 million[4][5] or £200 million[2][7] by different sources. This was the first time that the record fee was paid by a French club.